12. Clutter

I’ve written previously about the need for others to see you as fully engaged at meetings if you are to influence them.  One thing that will diminish your perceived engagement is if you place yourself behind a wall of clutter.  Having a laptop open on the table in front of you acts as a barrier, as do water bottles or any other upright objects.

But simply by moving them to the side, you open up the access others have to you and vice versa.

It always amazes me how many business cultures regard it as normal for people to spend half their time at meetings gazing at laptops.  This sabotages one of the great merits of meetings i.e. collective discussion.   As you look round the room the lack of focus is palpable with people’s attention split between the meeting and whatever they are keeping tabs on elsewhere.

By putting your laptop to the side or, better still, by not having it on the table at all you send a strong subliminal signal to others that your attention is committed to the meeting.  It’s the same with your phone: having it on the table suggests that you are not 100% in the here and now, whereas putting it away suggests the opposite.

If you must take your laptop to a meeting – perhaps you need it to make notes, although do you really? – I’d advise being really disciplined about how you use it.  Can you leave it to one side and only turn to it when you need to write something?  By doing this you emphasise that you are using it in relation to the meeting content rather than having your attention flitting between the discussion and, say, emails that come in.

Mute it so it doesn’t ‘ping’ every time a notification arrives.  Better still, close any programmes that generate notifications because they are likely to distract you.

Or another option is to half-close it so it’s clear you are prioritising what’s happening at the meeting.  This will also decrease your own temptation to glance at it.

Do not be fooled into thinking that because others use their laptops at the meeting, you can do so freely without any negative consequences.  Remember you are trying to increase your influence rather than find new ways to decrease it.